Poll: Do You Think BF has a Viable Population?

[BigTreeWalker]

My experience is with the rainforest PNW. I can't say or be knowledgeable about other parts of the country. The sign that they are in an area is easily overlooked or attributed to other animals. But when I can go into a specific area and find tracks, see feeding behavior and hear or record audio over the course of a year; go to another area miles removed and find the same evidence, it's not even logical to assume it's the same individual or group of individuals. As if they would go to the exact same place I chose to go. From track sizes and feeding evidence it also evidences different individuals. And when I get the same kind of confirmation a state or province removed from those areas from other researchers, that speaks to me of a viable population, at least in the PNW. 

 

As far as protection of the species. We don't know enough to even give them the requirements they may need. But off hand I would say to provide movement corridors, available water and manage the possible food species be it plant or animal. Don't be too hard on logging either. Weyerhaeuser ties up huge tracts of land, most of which is accessible by permit only in much of the PNW. There again, if it's helping the food species it probably helping bigfoot. 

[coffee2go]

I chose endangered because I feel their habitat is being threatened as we move into their territory and destroy their food source.  Some areas may be able to sustain them as long as we protect the forests and wetlands they inhabit.

[BobbyO]

Bottom one for me, zero reason to think they are having issues and i don't believe habitat is a major issue overall with Canada/Alaska being what it is.

In other areas of the States especially, maybe so, but overall no real issues.

Just because there are no Sasquatches in area y does't mean they're not thriving in area z, which doesn't mean they didn't have to leave area x, which doesn't mean that area w isn't now becoming prime habitat for them.

[hiflier]

Looking at Google Earth's image history for areas w, x, y, and z in fact can be very educational in regard to habitat reductions, increases, or development.

[gigantor]

I'm surprised by the results so far.

 

41℅ think BF is doing great, yet we have no proof. Wishful thinking I guess.

 

I'm with Norse on this one, BF is atleast very endangered.

[BobbyO]

We have no proof IMO because we're not as wonderful as we think we are, and boy does this species of ours think we are wonderful a lot of the time..;)

[norseman]

That still doesn't explain the final authority in the wilderness.....mother nature.

 

You would think that avalanches, mud slides, Forest fires, rock slides, volcanic eruptions, raging rivers, starvation, old age, logging truck grills and grizzly bear predation would account for something as it does with every other species on the planet including man.

 

But evidently Bigfoot has an answer for all of that as well.....or they just aren't there or we have been horribly unlucky finding bones.

[mesabe]

I voted doing great, and do think protecting the environment is always a good idea for BF and everybody else, I think they are such opportunists that they would survive regardless. Their reproduction rate may be too slow to sustain their niche, and like many other species on earth, may go extinct before any measure could help them.

[BobbyO]

I don't know Norse, if we're going down the road of saying "where are the bones" then there's enough out there content/reason wise without me going over it all again.

We're not dealing with an animal that is comparable in North America as it's a wild Primate and i'm hazarding a guess, a very, very smart one in which we know absolutely nothing of its capabilities, its habits, its movement, how it averts danger, zip, zilch, nada because we can't get near it.

Bottom line, we can't get near it.

And i know it's not because it's not there so whether we've been terribly unlucky at not finding the bones or just again, aren't doing it well enough or aren't looking hard enough or there aren't that many of them, i don't know

I personally have no issue and am content with the obvious fact that this thing runs rings around the average man, and even above average man, in its own forested environment, no issue at all and in fact, full acceptance of that.

[norseman]

So did native Americans! Europeans wore brightly colored uniforms and stood shoulder to shoulder in combat until we met native Americans using camo and hiding behind rocks and trees.......

 

Bushcraft does not explain why we have not discovered this species. Because we dig up NA bones and villages all the time. Despite these people running circles around us in the woods.

 

Bushcraft does not come into play when your corpse is rotting into the forest floor.

 

So what other factors are there? I say population size and density must play a crucial role in keeping them hidden.

 

I also say they are NOT everywhere...

Edited February 16, 2017 by norseman

[BobbyO]

We know human capabilities though don't we, Native Americans, we know what they did and didn't do and where they did or didn't do it.

I'm not so sure that the Natives were running rings around the Europeans, surely history and where you sit today would be a different place anyway if that was the case overall.

Humans are creatures of habit, very, very easy to predict and i do so regularly with work in a concrete jungle, very easy.

The Natives wouldn't have been different in that aspect, just in a different jungle, but equally predictable in time and as per usual its the animal with the superior brain that prevails.

But these things ? We don't know abut these things, anything.

We don't know if they bury their dead, and we don't know if they do, where they do it.

Is burying their dead far fetched ? It might be for some, but it's certainly not out of the realms of primate, higher primate, capability and especially ones that we have difficulty locating bones of.

We don't know where they sleep, where they feed, what they eat, where they breed, how they breed (don't think about that actually), how they protect the little ones, where they protect the little ones etc etc etc.

I don't know why we can't get near them but you know what, even if you popped one tomorrow we STILL wouldn't know anything about them, the world would just know that they were there, but we wouldn't in fact know any more about them then than we do today.

[ioyza]

When I decided to go out looking for them, we took a wrong turn, got a late start, and ended up going down a paved road that skirts the wilderness instead of the dirt road that penetrates it. We ended up at a campground with a parking lot instead of dispersed camping in thick bush. Found them anyway, first try. I thought we were incredibly lucky.

 

Then I started encountering them 5 minutes up a canyon from the suburbs. Then I moved to Chicago, found out they're here too. I wasn't lucky - they're doing great.

 

BobbyO's argument on avoidance is spot on. It's all spelled out in the sighting reports, and it's easy enough to experience first hand as well. I believe a lot of it is simply stubbornness on their part - why should they retreat from these areas they've lived in for decades or hundreds of years when they can simply avoid us and get on just fine? I also think the deer population bouncing back as well as opportunistic foraging from human food sources has helped them a lot.

[norseman]

OK....they bury their dead.....for tens of thousands of years.

 

Humans come along and excavate the pacnw for I5, the Ballard locks, the kingdome, downtown Seattle and Portland and Vancouver BC....millions of homes, apartments, golf courses, airports, gas and sewer lines.

 

Do they dig deeper than a Cat 330 excavator?

 

Or did they ever reside there?

 

 

There is a fundamental flaw in the explanation that they are everywhere and doing great....it's not logical.

[BobbyO]

Norse i'm struggling to understand where you're coming from right now.

Are you getting at saying that you don't think they have ever existed in places were these major cities are today because if they did, we would have found one or the remains of one ?

Or are you even coming close to saying that they might not exist after all because no one can answer these questions of yours ?

I can't answer these questions, i don't know why these things can't be found, where the bones are, why you can't get anywhere near them, i don't know and i'm pretty sure there's no one out there who can tell you either right now.

Why that is something i don't know either.

There must be a reason that the Government Agencies won't declare these things or acknowledge their existence to the masses, maybe your answers lie deep somewhere in there.

And without being pedantic, there was no option for "they're EVERYWHERE and doing great.", ..;)

Clusters baby, they live in clusters all across your continent.

[norseman]

In the pacnw Indian legends tell us about sasquatch who live in the mountains in small numbers that occasionally dropped out of the mountains to steal from them, or cannibalize on them. 

 

Today we are to believe that Sasquatch resides in 49 states and all Canadian provinces IN viable breeding populations? Even evidently right outside Chicago....but we cannot find one? Evidently because of their extreme bushcraft in the corn rows and cottonwood bottoms of Illinois!??? Come on man!!! Not happening...

 

I'll stick with option two or three. They are absent in much of the landscape....and rare were they are found...as the legends proclaim.

 

The popularity of this subject is outstripping common sense.